Adelaide Monarto Safari Zoo

CASE STUDY

Adelaide Monarto Safari Zoo Case Study

A Digital Fundraising Journey with Zoos South Australia

Zoos South Australia, consisting of Adelaide Zoo and Monarto Safari Park aimed to raise $2 million to bring three Asian Elephants to Montaro Safari Park, located 45 minutes from Adelaide. To achieve this goal, they collaborated with Neon Treehouse as we specialise in fundraising campaigns for for-profit organisations, as well as nonprofits like Adelaide Zoo.

With a comprehensive digital marketing strategy, focusing on Meta ads to drive donations for the Elephant Fundraiser Campaign, we helped them achieve their $2 million fundraising goal. The primary objective of raising awareness and soliciting contributions for the cause. The campaign was scheduled to run for 3 months from August 7th to October 7th, however, the fundraising goal was achieved within just over 3 weeks as of August 31st, raising $2.4 million.

Over 1 million impressions
696 donations at an impressive $9.42 cost per donation
$2.4 million raised
140 website registrations

CLIENT BACKGROUND

In addition to their mission of rescuing Asian Elephants from extinction, Zoo’s SA recognised the importance of effective team dynamics, particularly as a smaller, more agile organisation. They understood the necessity of specialist support to complement their dedicated team on the ground. To bring three Asian elephants to Monarto Safari Park and provide them with the best possible home, Zoo’s SA sought Neon Treehouse’s assistance in promoting their campaign message. Utilising a ‘now or never’ sentiment, they emphasized the urgency of raising $2 million to bring the elephants to Adelaide. The collaboration targeted a diverse audience, ranging from animal lovers to high-net-worth investors, all united in the effort to make this vital conservation goal a reality.

OBJECTIVES

The primary objective of the campaign was to raise $2 million for Zoos SA’s initiative to bring three Asian elephants to Monarto Safari Park. Accompanying this financial goal to generate donations and fundraising support, was a secondary objective to increase awareness surrounding the cause and more broadly for Adelaide Zoo and Monarto Safari Park.

Furthermore, the campaign sought to elevate the status of Zoos SA as a conservation charity while fostering emotional attachment to the animals among the target audience, which encompassed a diverse range of individuals, from animal enthusiasts to high-net-worth investors.

CAMPAIGN VISION

The strategy for this campaign drew from both milestone dates throughout the campaign and the overall objective. Different ads were created for specified event dates in the campaign timeline, highlighting a range of events from fund-matching days to the elephants’ birthdays. This diversity ensured fresh content for the audience throughout the campaign.

Ads were targeted to various audience sets, including charity & non-profit, conservation & sustainability, and animal lovers, as well as retargeting audiences. Although planned to run for three months, the campaign exceeded its donation goal in just one, much sooner than expected.

THE CUBBY APPROACH

Neon Treehouse’s strategic approach to creating a successful campaign started with segmenting audiences and recognising the importance of tailoring content to specific groups like Animal Lovers and Athletes/Triathletes, who showed high engagement and conversion rates.

Through creative optimisations, including A/B testing, we refined the ad content, ensuring it resonated with the target audience and maximised campaign performance in line with the donations objective. Embracing visually impactful content, particularly image ad formats, over collection ads, assisted in capturing user attention effectively.

Gender-based targeting further refined the audience, with female audiences outperforming the male audience with higher engagement and registration rates.

Overall, we utilised a thoughtful and data-driven digital marketing approach, ultimately achieving Zoos SA’s fundraising objective ($2.4 million raised) while also raising awareness and support for their wildlife conservation efforts.

RESULTS

During the Zoo’s SA campaign, 696 donations were generated at an average cost of $9.42 per donation, while recording over 1 million impressions with an impressive CTR of 6.79%, indicating great user engagement. The three main audience segments all delivered around 150 donations each; Charity & Non-Profit (NFP), Conservation & Sustainability and Animal Lovers. Retargeting efforts achieved a similar number of donations with a lower cost per donation.

Through A/B testing and ongoing campaign optimisation, Neon Treehouse improved ad content which helped boost performance, including an increase in a secondary objective; website registrations. The “Run Wild” campaign, launched alongside the Elephant Fundraiser, delivered 84 registrations, with an average cost per registration of $41.56.

The campaign also achieved other significant engagement metrics, including 18,834 page engagements and 109 shares which further highlights the strength of the ads in delivering the key wildlife conservation message.

CONCLUSION

In summary, Neon Treehouse’s strategic digital approach to the marketing campaign, coupled with targeted audience segmentation and creative optimisations, played a pivotal role in the success of Montaro Zoo’s fundraising campaign. By leveraging Meta ads and implementing data-driven marketing strategies, we effectively raised awareness and financial support, ultimately contributing to the realisation of Zoos SA objectives.

Read more of our digital marketing case studies here.